Prologue
Jamal and Lotta met in Finland in the autumn of 2023, when Jamal was invited to Turku, for his performance You See... at the New Performance Turku Biennale. The performance is for one participant at a time, and it’s inspired by Jamal's conversations about privilege with different people. During the performance, he asks the participants questions that lead them to choosing a card. The cards are race, gender, class, sexual orientation, ability, and religion.
The performances took place in the contemporary art space Titanik, where Lotta works as a producer. She participated in the performance and wrote a text in Finnish about her experience as part of the Titanik 2023 publication. Lotta wanted to thank the artist for the performance and translated the text into English for Jamal to read. Their communication intensified quickly, and You See... epilogues was born.
You See... epilogues is an activist and participatory art project they have created together. It’s about a series of encounters and focuses on the exploration of the intersections of privilege through art, across geographical borders. Jamal performed You See... remotely during the spring of 2024 to a total of five people working professionally in the arts in Finland, after which Lotta interviewed them individually about their experience. The interviews, which were implemented conversationally, provided the participants with an opportunity to articulate the thoughts that the performance had provoked and to continue reflecting on the issues that had arisen for them during You See…
The interviews are anonymous, and the texts are anonymised so that the participants felt as safe as possible to take part in the performance and the interview without their position in the art field coming out. Participants received their text for commenting and reviewing before this publication.
The text is a compilation of these five interviews, epilogues. Many thanks to the participants and the Samuel Huber Art Foundation for their support. Thank you, Ruby Louise Rose, for proofreading the text.
Photo: Jussi Virkkumaa, New Performance Turku Biennale
”When we were going through those things, the question came up: what is the privilege that I recognise that I would be willing to give up? It was an exciting question, and I thought about it a certain way, and I said I would give up everything. It was a bit of a banal answer.”
”I've been thinking about how to be an ally to people who are in a more disadvantaged or vulnerable position compared to the majority population. In working life, you often encounter superficial experiments or reforms that do not change the structures.”
”I have been becoming resentful of this work community, and this performance brought it to the surface again. And while this piece is not meant to help me… but when I think about how I can better help the collapse of white supremacy… Now, if any of my co-workers could hear this, they would wonder, "what are they talking about, what white supremacy?" Well, here I go again.”
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